Is Your Boyfriend Monitoring the Situation?

When something happens around the world some guys love to tell you

A few days ago, seven B-2 stealth bombers flew into Iranian airspace striking nuclear facilities along with 24 submarine launched cruise missiles. This prompted Iran to launch missiles at an American  military base in Qatar. All of this occurred while tensions in the Middle East rose with Israel and Iran trading attacks. 

Worry not though. Your boyfriend is monitoring the situation. 

When certain events happen, men of all ages glue themselves to a computer or their phone in order to keep abreast of the developing situation.

You will hear the following phrases. 

“Babe, did you hear about…”

“Can you believe this…”

”You’ll never guess what happened…”

After reading a handful of tweets, two Youtube videos, and three quarters of a podcast, they become geopolitical experts and now know more about a military and political quagmire that has stumped intelligence analysts and career diplomats. 

In fact, in their minds they think if they just finished that podcast they could have their own office at Langley. 

I first noticed this after the war in Ukraine started. I knew a guy who the day before Russia invaded couldn't have found Ukraine on a map let alone Kyiv. 

And two days later he was elbow deep in Twitter monitoring the situation. 

It has even become a meme at this point. 

Guys especially love telling their girl about whatever situation their currently monitoring.

It’s a rather common scenario and seems to affect a certain type of dude. 

You know the one.

The one that no matter the subject, he’s always an expert. 

During the election cycle, he was a professional election forecaster, a pollster, as well as having very strong opinions on nearly every domestic policy because he saw three episodes of West Wing. 

When football season comes around he will gladly tell you everything the coach is doing wrong, despite not being able to tell you what a zero blitz is nor could he tell you what a Mike linebacker is. 

Studies show this guy is the same type to get mad because they show a 13 second clip of Taylor Swift during Sunday Night Football. 

Heaven help you if he also does Fantasy Football because he will be three times as annoying. 

Their triumphant moment will be when the tension finally settles a little. 

“Good news, I think we’re going to be okay.”

Why thanks Dale, I wasn’t exactly worried about Iran invading the contiguous U.S. what with two oceans, and a military budget big enough to fight God.

The hard part is getting to care about other stuff once the excitement is over. 

As a political reporter who mostly covered local and state level events, I would be happy when they took an interest in geopolitical events. 

Like yes, being informed is good! Here are some things to read. Here’s a little background for content. 

But once the dust settles the attention starts to wander. Like a puppy looking for a new toy. 

I will try to tell them that there are plenty of situations that need to be monitored. 

Let’s monitor your local school board while they try to ban books.

Let’s monitor your city council so that they can take steps to keep the housing in your town from ballooning and building mega mansions and having people priced out of their own city.

It’s June as I write this, let’s monitor the scary groups mad about the Pride festival in your hometown. 

Let’s leave monitoring of some of these military strikes to the experts. Cause I hate to break it to you bud, but you work an email job, and have to have an ergonomic keyboard to prevent your carpal tunnel from flaring up. You’re not a Lieutenant Colonel in the Air Force. 

Here’s the thing too. 

When it’s close to home you can do more than just monitor the situation. 

You can help.

But at the very least don’t bug your girl about it because I promise she doesn’t care. 

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